Claude-François Rabiat

Made entirely of finely chiselled and gilt bronze with both a matte and burnished finishing, the present wall-lights feature an unusual design. The back plates are in the shape of a lyre, embellished with garlands of flowers, stylised palmettes and leaves. Each lyre terminates in griffins heads on the top and in a large acanthus leaf at bottom. At centre there is a mask of Medusa with butterfly wings, just above the attachment of the three sinuous light branches.Even if the unusual design does not allow the model to be attributed a specific bronze-smith, the quality of both the chiselling and the finishing suggest their attribution to the workshop of Pierre Philippe Thomire or the one of Jean-Jacques Feuchère, and presumably executed for one of them by Claude-François Rabiat (Paris 1756–1815) after a design by Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine.